The General vs. the President: MacArthur and Truman at the Brink of Nuclear War

From master storyteller and historian H. W. Brands, twice a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, comes the riveting story of how President Harry Truman and General Douglas MacArthur squared off to decide America's future in the aftermath of World War II.

FDR

One of today's premier biographers has written a modern, comprehensive, indeed ultimate book on the epic life of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. This is a portrait painted in broad strokes and fine details. We see how Roosevelt's restless energy, fierce intellect, personal magnetism, and ability to project effortless grace permitted him to master countless challenges throughout his life.

Herbert Hoover: A Life

Prize-winning historian Glen Jeansonne delves into the life of our most misunderstood president, offering up a surprising new portrait of Herbert Hoover - dismissing previous assumptions and revealing a political Progressive in the mold of Theodore Roosevelt and the most resourceful American since Benjamin Franklin.

His Final Battle: The Last Months of Franklin Roosevelt

"By far the most enigmatic leading figure" of World War II. That's how the British military historian John Keegan described Franklin D. Roosevelt, who frequently left his contemporaries guessing, never more so than at the end of his life. Here, in a hugely insightful account, a prizewinning author and journalist untangles the narrative threads of Roosevelt's final months, showing how he juggled the strategic, political, and personal choices he faced as the war, his presidency, and his life raced in tandem to their climax.

Reagan: The Life

Ronald Reagan today is a conservative icon, celebrated for transforming the American domestic agenda and playing a crucial part in ending communism in the Soviet Union. In his masterful new biography, H. W. Brands argues that Reagan, along with FDR, was the most consequential president of the 20th century. Reagan took office at a time when the public sector, after a half century of New Deal liberalism, was widely perceived as bloated and inefficient, an impediment to personal liberty.

The Man Who Saved the Union: Ulysses Grant in War and Peace

Ulysses Grant rose from obscurity to discover he had a genius for battle, and he propelled the Union to victory in the Civil War. After Abraham Lincoln's assassination and the disastrous brief presidency of Andrew Johnson, America turned to Grant again to unite the country, this time as president. In Brands' sweeping, majestic full biography, Grant emerges as a heroic figure who was fearlessly on the side of right.

Truman

Hailed by critics as an American masterpiece, David McCullough's sweeping biography of Harry S. Truman captured the heart of the nation. The life and times of the 33rd president of the United States, Truman provides a deeply moving look at an extraordinary, singular American.

Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume Two

In volume 2, Burlingame examines Lincoln's presidency and the trials of the Civil War. He supplies fascinating details on the crisis over Fort Sumter and the relentless office seekers who plagued Lincoln. He introduces listeners to the president's battles with hostile newspaper editors and his quarrels with incompetent field commanders. Burlingame also interprets Lincoln's private life, discussing his marriage to Mary Todd, the untimely death of his son, Willie, to disease in 1862, and his recurrent anguish over the enormous human costs of the war.

Andrew Jackson: His Life and Times

The most famous American of his time, Andrew Jackson is a seminal figure in American history. The first "common man" to rise to the presidency, Jackson embodied the spirit and the vision of the emerging American nation; the term "Jacksonian democracy" is embedded in our national lexicon. With the sweep, passion, and attention to detail that made The First American a Pulitzer Prize finalist, historian H.W. Brands shapes a historical narrative that's as fast-paced and compelling as the best fiction.

American Colossus: The Triumph of Capitalism, 1865-1900

The three decades after the Civil War saw a wholesale shift in American life, and the cause was capitalism. Driven by J. P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, and oth­ers like them, armies of men and women were harnessed to a new vision of massive industry. A society rooted in the soil became one based in cities, and legions of immigrants were drawn to American shores. Brands portrays the stunning trans­formation of the landscape and institutions of American life in these years.

The Warburgs: The Twentieth-Century Odyssey of a Remarkable Jewish Family

Bankers, philanthropists, scholars, socialites, artists, and politicians, the Warburgs stood at the pinnacle of German (and, later, German American) Jewry. They forged economic dynasties, built mansions and estates, assembled libraries, endowed charities, and advised a German kaiser and two American presidents. But their very success made the Warburgs lightning rods for anti-Semitism, and their sense of patriotism became increasingly dangerous in a Germany that had declared Jews the enemy.

The Path to Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson

This is the story of the rise to national power of a desperately poor young man from the Texas Hill Country. The Path to Power reveals in extraordinary detail the genesis of the almost superhuman drive, energy, and ambition that set LBJ apart. It follows him from the Hill Country to New Deal Washington, from his boyhood through the years of the Depression to his debut as Congressman, his heartbreaking defeat in his first race for the Senate, and his attainment, nonetheless, at age 31, of the national power for which he hungered.

No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II

No Ordinary Time describes how the isolationist and divided United States of 1940 was unified under the extraordinary leadership of Franklin Roosevelt to become the preeminent economic and military power in the world.

Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream: The Most Revealing Portrait of a President and Presidential Power Ever Written

Doris Kearns Goodwin's classic life of Lyndon Johnson, who presided over the Great Society, the Vietnam War, and other defining moments in the tumultuous 1960s, is a monument in political biography. From the moment the author, then a young woman from Harvard, first encountered President Johnson at a White House dance in the spring of 1967, she became fascinated by the man - his character, his enormous energy and drive, and his manner of wielding these gifts in an endless pursuit of power.

American Warlords: How Roosevelt's High Command Led America to Victory in World War II

In a lifetime shaped by politics, President Franklin D. Roosevelt proved himself a master manipulator of Congress, the press, and the public. But when war in Europe and Asia threatened America's shores, FDR found himself in a world turned upside down, where his friends became his foes, his enemies his allies. To help wage democracy's first "total war", he turned to one of history's most remarkable triumvirates.

Theodore Rex

The most eagerly awaited presidential biography in years, Theodore Rex tells the story of President Theodore Roosevelt in real time, reflecting the world as "TR" saw it. Full of cinematic detail, Theodore Rex moves with the exhilarating pace of a novel, yet it rides on a granite base of scholarship.

American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House

Beloved and hated, venerated and reviled, Andrew Jackson was an orphan who fought his way to the pinnacle of power, bending the nation to his will in the cause of democracy. Jackson's election in 1828 ushered in a new and lasting era in which the people, not distant elites, were the guiding force in American politics. Democracy made its stand in the Jackson years, and he gave voice to the hopes and the fears of a restless, changing nation facing challenging times at home and threats abroad.

American Revolutions: A Continental History, 1750-1804

The American Revolution is often portrayed as a high-minded, orderly event whose capstone, the Constitution, provided the ideal framework for a democratic, prosperous nation. Alan Taylor, two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize, gives us a different creation story in this magisterial history of the nation's founding. Rising out of the continental rivalries of European empires and their native allies, Taylor's Revolution builds like a ground fire overspreading Britain's mainland colonies, fueled by local conditions, destructive, hard to quell.

Peter Stephens says:"Best book on the American Revolution that I have read"

Franklin and Winston

Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill were the greatest leaders of "the Greatest Generation." Jon Meacham explores the fascinating relationship between the two men who piloted the free world to victory in World War II. It was a crucial friendship, and a unique one: a president and a prime minister spending enormous amounts of time together and exchanging nearly two thousand messages.

Being Nixon: The Fears and Hopes of an American President

What was it really like to be Richard Nixon? Evan Thomas tackles this fascinating question by peeling back the layers of a man driven by a poignant mix of optimism and fear. The result is both insightful history and an astonishingly compelling psychological portrait of an anxious introvert who struggled to be a transformative statesman.

Eisenhower in War and Peace

Author of the best-seller FDR, Jean Edward Smith is a master of the presidential biography. Setting his sights on Dwight D. Eisenhower, Smith delivers a rich account of Eisenhower’s life using previously untapped primary sources. From the military service in WWII that launched his career to the shrewd political decisions that kept America out of wars with the Soviet Union and China, Smith reveals a man who never faltered in his dedication to serving America, whether in times of war or peace.

The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism

Goodwin describes the broken friendship between Teddy Roosevelt and his chosen successor, William Howard Taft. With the help of the "muckraking" press, Roosevelt had wielded the Bully Pulpit to challenge and triumph over abusive monopolies, political bosses, and corrupting money brokers. Roosevelt led a revolution that he bequeathed to Taft only to see it compromised as Taft surrendered to money men and big business. The rupture led Roosevelt to run against Taft for president, an ultimately futile race that gave power away to the Democrats.

The Fall of Berlin 1945

The Red Army had much to avenge when it finally reached the frontiers of the Third Reich in January 1945. Frenzied by their terrible experiences with Wehrmacht and SS brutality, they wreaked havoc - tanks crushing refugee columns, mass rape, pillage, and unimaginable destruction. Hundreds of thousands of women and children froze to death or were massacred; more than seven million fled westward from the fury of the Red Army. It was the most terrifying example of fire and sword ever known.

Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume One

In the first multivolume biography of Abraham Lincoln to be published in decades, Lincoln scholar Michael Burlingame offers a fresh look at the life of one of America's greatest presidents. Incorporating the field notes of earlier biographers along with decades of research in multiple manuscript archives and long-neglected newspapers, this remarkable work will both alter and reinforce our current understanding of America's 16th president.

Publisher's Summary

A sweeping, magisterial biography of the man generally considered the greatest president of the 20th century, admired by Democrats and Republicans alike.

Traitor to His Class sheds new light on FDR's formative years; his remarkable willingness to champion the concerns of the poor and disenfranchised; and his combination of political genius, firm leadership, and matchless diplomacy in saving democracy in America during the Great Depression and the American cause of freedom in World War II.

Drawing on archival materials, public speeches, personal correspondence, and accounts by family and close associates, acclaimed best-selling historian and biographer H. W. Brands offers a compelling and intimate portrait of Roosevelt's life and career.

Brands explores the powerful influence of FDR's dominating mother and the often tense and always unusual partnership between FDR and his wife, Eleanor, and her indispensable contributions to his presidency.

Most of all, the book traces in breathtaking detail FDR's revolutionary efforts with his New Deal legislation to transform the American political economy in order to save it, his forceful and cagey leadership before and during World War II, and his lasting legacy in creating the foundations of the postwar international order.

Traitor to His Class brilliantly captures the qualities that have made FDR a beloved figure to millions of Americans.

If you could sum up Traitor to His Class in three words, what would they be?

Not Brands' best.

What other book might you compare Traitor to His Class to and why?

Any of many history books. This is not my favorite HW Brands biography; I read his works on Andrew Jackson and Ben Franklin and found both much more compelling. This could be my affinity for older America, or the difference between reading and listening to a heavily detailed piece of history, but nevertheless I was never as excited for the next page of FDR as I was for the other two. It seems to me more of the predjudices and judgements of the modern man figure into Brands' analysis of the New Deal president, and figure in more favorably than they might another hundred years down the line.

Have you listened to any of Mark Deakins’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

No, but this was good narration.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

No, I'd say this should be free to anyone that could.

Any additional comments?

Listening to mammoth recordings of detailed history is not for the faint if heart, or ear. How much did I retain?

An econ class in high school is the extent of my knowledge of the subject. I zoned out through most of the complicated descriptions and explanations. I know that the Great Depression and the New Deal had all to do with the banks, the private sector, government and so on and so forth, but I wanted a biography, not Economics 401. I wish the book discussed Eleanor a little more. I know this is FDR's biography, but she was such a big part of his life and was often involved in policy matters and was someone he discussed major issues with.

This is a very interesting read about one of the most turbulent times in American history and of the role of FDR in leading the country out of the Great Depression and through the Second World War. FDR was a complex and highly intelligent President who did a great job leading the nation. His role in helping the British and Russia with Lend Lease early in the war and setting production levels for arms were a key to victory. His belief in self determination for other countries and non belief in colonialism made him an American president highly regarded world wide. He tried to make the government a force for good. He certainly rates on a par with Washington and Lincoln as one of our greatest presidents. His engaging personality, intelligence, and political savvy were key to his success. Brand did a great job portraying his strong points and personal flaws.

I expected an objective book that reviewed the flaws as well as the successes, The ramifications of his actions, good and bad. Instead this is the glorification of a man with very human traits that were not as selfless as is portrayed,

What do you think your next listen will be?

Nothing from this author

What didn’t you like about Mark Deakins’s performance?

It was good but monotone. This may have been the content and length.

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?

Pure unadulterated hagiography: no critiques just a total defense of FDR's policies, decisions, and political goals. I am sure this book will be added to the Democratic Party's inspired canon of books. I have read two other H. W. Brands' books (Grant and America Colossus) and I have heard numerous lectures from Brands in iTunesU. *A Traitor to His Class* lacks the objectivity and story-telling passion of Brands' other books and lectures. Suggest reading Paul Johnson's *A History of the American People* for a through-going conservative evaluation of the FDR presidency.

Would you recommend Traitor to His Class to your friends? Why or why not?

No, I felt that all objectivity was left on the editor's floor.

Which scene was your favorite?

The description of Roosevelt's polio struggles and his psychological struggles dealing with his disabilities.